Chocolate tablets are very popular with consumers and traditionally have been in the form of simple moulded block shapes. There is an increasing demand for new chocolate shapes which add visual interest to the experience of enjoying chocolate tablets.
Moulding techniques and apparatus, such as those conventionally used for making moulded chocolate products, place significant limitations on the shape of product that may be obtained. In particular, it is not generally possible to mould a chocolate piece or tablet having a core or cavity passing through the thickness of the bar. When correctly tempered chocolate is placed into a tablet mould and cooled, it contracts. With a simple mould shape, this contraction aids the release of the solid chocolate tablet from the mould. To mould a tablet with a cavity passing through it, one might imagine that one could simply design the mould in such a way that there was a raised central section of the mould corresponding to the desired cavity. However, with such a mould, when the chocolate contracts it grips the central section and cannot readily be removed from the mould. This effect is similar to that observed when a blacksmith heats a metal band and places it around a wooden wheel and then cools the metal to grip the wheel. Chocolate demoulding problems are worse with thin chocolate tablets as they lack the necessary weight relative to surface area to fall out of an inverted mould under gravity.
We have devised an apparatus and process for the manufacture of a chocolate piece or tablet having a core or cavity passing through the thickness of the piece or tablet whereby the above problems have been alleviated or overcome.